What David had thought was a black stone swung around on a long, equally black neck. It wasn’t a stone at all. It was a snake’s head. The head of the biggest snake David had ever seen.

  No. Not a snake either. A lindworm. A damn dragon.

  Nathan would be so pissed he missed this.

  It was a magnificent monster, covered in oily-black scales, with two strong arms and no other limbs. The head was big enough that he could have comfortably sat down on it, the body as massive as a tree. Each of the two gleaming golden eyes was as big as David’s whole head.

  The teeth glistened in the sun, drops of venom gathering at the tip as the creature smiled down at David.

  So beautiful. Powerful.

  The tail wrapped around his chest, lifting him in the air, up to that beautiful face. Every scale was shining in the light. He wanted to touch the shimmering black scales. See if they felt as smooth as they looked. Prick his finger at the tip of those amazing teeth, feel if they were as pointy as they appeared.

  The lindworm hissed, forked tongue tasting the air. David had never seen a prettier snake. His ribs creaked, but the only thing that hurt was his right arm. The silvery scars there.

  In the distance, a werewolf howled.

  Morgulon. Had to be her, because the howl was enough to break through the spell and remind him that he was looking up at a bloody Rot-queen.

  A Rot-queen that was crushing his chest, squeezing the life out of him.

  David reflexively tried to breathe and couldn’t move a muscle. His heart was beating so hard it felt like it was touching the insides of his ribs. His vision was turning white around the edges.

  He still held the knife, though. The silver knife. And his right arm was still free.

  Weakly, he moved it against the black scales crushing him. The blade shattered on contact, exploding in a flash of silver and crumbling steel. It didn’t even mark the thick armour, yet David was thrown through the air, back into the swirling, stinky water. Back amidst the three sacrifices he had dragged here.

  Still bleeding magic into the lake.

  The three living sources of magic stood frozen in the blubbering liquid of the lake that looked nothing like water anymore. Thick, black slime was climbing up their naked legs like mould. As soon as David fell, it surged up his body, too. It was exactly as sticky as it looked. Like a thousand snails were climbing up every inch of his skin. Slow and cold and incessant.

  It still couldn’t touch his arm. Where the scars glowed brighter than ever with Alvin’s blood.

  David shook the arm, sending the black slush flying. It didn’t deter the snails from climbing up his neck, towards his jaw and lips. He rubbed his mouth, buying himself a few seconds to breathe, while trying to push himself out of the lake with the other arm.

  He found no purchase. His hand simply sunk into the dirt—toppling him backwards. His head went under, just long enough for the black liquid to burn into his eyes and make him fear he’d go blind. Then the dragon’s tail wrapped around his foot, pulling him up again, dangling him in front of its giant face, upside down.

  Speaking to him like the werewolves did.

  Look at yourself, undoing everything your half-souled friends accomplished. A terrible glee filled the dragon’s thoughts. For two centuries they have guarded this river…and here you are. Spilling their blood right in my wellspring.

  It shook its tail, shook David, like one might shake a purse to get out a coin that was stuck in the folds.

  Or maybe hoping to make him puke.

  David just hung there, too weak to fight or do anything else. His head pounded. He didn’t even manage to raise his arms when the tail whipped through the air, smashing him into the lake. The surface should have been hard as stone at the speed David hit it, but it welcomed him like a cushion, dragging him under. The black slime muffled all sounds. Yet it felt like the dragon’s voice came from right next to his ear.

  Look, it hissed.

  David wasn’t sure if he had opened his eyes or not, but he did see. He saw a village, one of the ones he had burned with the werewolves: An assortment of half-burned huts, overgrown by twisted vines and giant fungi, populated by the dead livestock staggering around aimlessly.

  He didn’t recognize the place. They had burned too many of them. After a while, they had all just blurred together.

  Before he could look closer, the village disappeared, reforming as a different one, and then another one, and another one, and on and on. All equally deserted. Equally overrun with the Rot.

  So much blood you have fed me. So much power. So much death, crowed the Rot-queen, just as David wondered if it would show him every single settlement he had the werewolves destroy.

  Instead, a single farmstead appeared, this one still inhabited. Rot-brutes were skulking around the building. The people inside sat frozen, staring out of the windows from hollow eyes.

  A lone werewolf, trapped in vines, struggling against the same oily substance as David.

  Marques de Burg, wearing a silver helmet, dragged down from Calder’s back and buried beneath a pile of creepers.

  Trees walking across a field, marching on the ruins of Port Neaf.

  Werewolves, stalking a convoy of refugees.

  Picot. The black, tar-like substance covered his lower face, crawling into his mouth. It skirted the silver manacles on his wrists, which fell away from his arms as David watched, blackened and flaking, the iron core rusted away much quicker than should have been possible.

  Was this real? Was any of this real?

  It’s all real, oh yes, the dragon whispered. Its voice was gentle, even kind. You did this. You made this possible. I will swallow this kingdom whole.

  The Rot-queen chuckled in his ear. All thanks to you.

  It ripped him out of the blubbering water, shook him out—waiting just long enough for David to take a shaking breath, and watch the real Picot fall to his knees, into the black soup. Then the queen dragged him under again.

  Witness what you did. Witness it all.

  The werewolves attacked the trek of refugees—defenseless people fleeing the war. Worse, David saw it through the eyes of the wolves. It was him, biting every bit of flesh in reach. Feeling the bones creak between his jaws. Tasting the blood on his tongue and wanting more. Killing humans and livestock alike in a mad fever, driven by an inhuman fury and hunger.

  He was every single man in the trek, too, desperately trying to defend his wife and children. Staring up at the towering beasts. Reaching for every weapon in sight, useless as they were. They were just farmers. They didn’t have any silver. Just knives and sticks and some ancient muskets.

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  He was every mother huddling over her baby, hoping against all reason to hide them. Running into the fields until his legs gave out or the teeth clamped around his neck.

  Every child, crying and dying without understanding what was even going on.

  A thousand broken bones. A thousand deaths.

  Over and over and over.

  Had enough?

  It dragged him up, until he hung above the blubbering tar upside down, retching against the blood he could taste on his tongue, weeping with a pain that wasn’t his. He would have screamed had he had the breath for it.

  The world was a blur of black and white around him. The ugly, oily bubbles popping like blisters on the surface of the lake were the only thing he could see clearly,

  He could still see the panicked faces of the children, the terror of the adults in front of his inner eye. Real or not, he didn’t think he’d ever forget them.

  Dimly, he was aware of four bright white lights hovering just outside the waters.

  They’re waiting for you to surrender so they can kill us both, the Rot whispered.

  David snorted, sending a spray of the poison trying to climb past his lips flying. Was that supposed to scare him? Death? He rather wished the werewolves would get it over with. Or that damn worm.

  The Rot-queen towered over him, hissing. Laughing. Mocking him. Such valour. Determination.

  It could have killed him with one bite. Those fangs were long enough to pierce through his chest all the way, from his sternum to his backbone. The coils of its body curled and weaved through the water.

  All it needed was to throw itself at David, crush him under the weight of its body, or drown him in the mud.

  The head on the long neck swung left and right, looking at David from all angles. Probably wondering how best to kill him.

  He pressed his eyes close, swallowing against the bile that rose in his throat. He could still see the dead it had shown him.

  He felt the tail wrap around his chest once more, dragging him under.

  Drowning it was, apparently.

  When David opened his eyes again, he was home. Lying in his own bed, in his bedroom at Heron Hall. Staring at the antler-chandelier hanging from the ceiling. His clothes smelled of lavender. That was weird, wasn’t it?

  “What’s weird?” George Louis asked, as if David had spoken the thought aloud.

  Slowly, David pushed himself up on his elbows. It was hard. As if a weight pulled hin back under the covers.

  George Louis sat in the chair by the window, reclining comfortably. Twirling his spoon in a cup of coffee before him, wearing a bathrobe and not much else.

  “Are you saying I shouldn't have let you sleep in?” the king asked.

  Children laughed outside. The sound made David jerk.

  George Louis’s smile faded to concern. “It’s alright, David,” he said. “You’re home. You’re done. The war is won.”

  He pushed at the chair across the table with his foot. “Sit down. Have some coffee. Wake up properly.”

  Coffee. Coffee sounded great. It smelled delicious, too.

  “Sit,” the king repeated. “Drink.”

  It was hard, pushing off the soft bed, but he did sit up fully. Alvin’s shade flared to life next to him, hackles raised, growling.

  “Oh, stop it,” George Louis said, grinning. “You’ll have him forever. I just want him for a moment.”

  David pushed out of the bed and walked right through the ghost, letting himself fall into the chair. His body felt heavy. As if he were sick.

  Black as tar was the coffee George Louis offered him.

  Before he could reach for the cup, the door opened. General Clermont walked in, his one good eye gleaming.

  “You swore an oath, Major,” the old man growled, swiping the cup right out of the king’s hand. “I haven't relieved you of your duties yet.”

  The general chugged the coffee down, despite the wave of steam it blew into his face, setting the cup down with enough force to make it crack. “On your feet, soldier.”

  “Oh, stop bothering him,” George Louis said calmly but firmly. “David. Just stay a minute. Drink.”

  He offered his own cup. It was very black coffee. It reminded David of something, though he couldn't say what it was.

  “I—I don’t think I should,” he said slowly.

  “Don’t you want to stay?” the king asked. He looked crestfallen. “You don’t have to go back. You’ve done your part.”

  George Louis leaned forwards. The robe shifted, revealing the smooth, slightly tanned skin of his chest. “Please, David. Just a cup of coffee.”

  George Louis took a drink himself, before offering the cup again. It did smell good.

  “You swore an oath,” Clermont repeated. “David Feleke, will you break the word you gave?”

  David sat up straighter. He had never broken his word. He wouldn't.

  George Louis grabbed his arm with surprising strength before he could get up. “If you go with her, you’ll never find this place again. I’m offering you the only peace you’ll ever find.”

  Peace. Peace sounded nice.

  “Remember when you took up the crossbow,” Clermont said. “Remember why.”

  David stared at George Louis, at the smooth skin of his neck, his collarbones, the stripe of flesh of his chest visible beneath the robe. He didn’t want to remember those first hunts, but the memory came unbidden.

  The forest was dark around him. His father’s crossbow was too big in his hands. Every rustling leaf and every snapping twig made him jump. Terrified of the dark, of the monsters he couldn’t see, the other hunters, the highwaymen, and above all, terrified to fail his family.

  They were counting on him. His baby brother would die if he didn’t succeed here.

  “They’re still counting on you,” General Clermont said.

  “Drink,” said George Louis.

  “We’re all counting on you,” Alvin’s ghost whispered in his head. “Someone has to do what's necessary.”

  Right. Someone did.

  “On your feet, soldier!” Clermont barked, at the same moment as George Louis threw the scalding hot coffee at him.

  Gasping, David came back to himself. Morgulon’s lips—her human lips—were pressed to his, sucking the Rot’s essence out of his mouth, the spoiled magic.

  He could still taste it on his tongue, bitter and sour and sweeter than even fresh sugar cane. He wanted more. Wanted to empty the whole lake of the stuff, drink it all up. But Morgulon had gripped his throat, thumb digging into his jugular, cutting off his airway and making him gag.

  When he started retching, she pulled back, spitting out the sludge. Her eyes burned blue, but there were black veins underneath her skin, snaking outwards from her mouth, all the way to the scar on her cheek and temple. The hand holding his throat shook and she let go, hovering over him. Her whole body was burning with the same blue flame that had consumed Lenny.

  The memory pushed David’s stomach over the edge. He barely managed to turn his head enough not to choke on his own vomit. Alvin tried to press his head below his arm, as if to lift him. David reached out to the ghost, but as always went right through him.

  He lay there, shaking and shivering despite the summer’s heat. Every part of his body ached. Every breath was painful—he was fairly certain that the Rot-queen had cracked some of his ribs.

  The sweetness of the Rot’s temptation lingered on his tongue, offering kind oblivion. All he had to do was crawl over to the water’s edge and drink…

  David groaned softly. It was hard to push the thought away. The memory of the vision. Of the peace George Louis—or rather the Rot-queen—had offered him.

  When he managed to prop himself up onto his elbows to see what was happening around him, Morgulon had transformed. The blue fire in her mane burned as bright as he had ever seen it. Like a brazier she stood between him and the Rot-queen. Fox and Laurent stalked its flanks. The huge head atop the long neck swiveled left and right, unable to keep all three elders in view at the same time.

  It didn’t attack the werewolves.

  It took all David’s strength to sit up all the way. Pettau, deVries and Picot were nowhere in sight. He couldn’t spot Ragna or Fenn, either.

  Stiffly, Morgulon took a step towards the lindworm, staring up at the Rot-queen with the exaggerated eye-contact of a herding dog. She caught its gaze at the same moment as Laurent jumped forwards to bit the lindworm’s flank.

  The weirdest thing was that it seemed to work. The lindworm ducked its head.

  Then it twisted around itself and took off, slithering away at amazing speed. Towards the distant mountains.

  “Mithras’s flaming balls,” David whispered.